Today, paid parking spaces at public places are managed using parking meters that are expensive and hard to maintain. Current parking meters that are purely mechanical cannot easily track usage and collection information. Electronic parking meters can require a large amount of power, which can be provided by battery power or an electrical connection that is connected to an electric power source. These meters charge users based on pre-defined time slots. This model of reserving space at parking sites and physically making payments at the parking meter is inefficient and has multiple limitations. The current model is very inconvenient for consumers. The consumer has to make a payment for a timeslot that is a best effort estimate. The consumer ends up using either more or less of the time slot that he/she chose to use. If the consumer overshoots the pre-selected time-slot, the consumer ends up returning back to pay to reserve more time or be penalized with a fine.
Lost revenue is also a problem for any parking authority managing parking spaces. It can be very expensive for organizations to manage all expired parking meters. Although an automated process would eliminate the fines consumers pay for expired meters, it is expected that the organization would realize higher revenue from efficient management of the metered slots.
Accordingly, there exists a need for cost effective systems, methods, apparatuses, and computer program products for maximizing efficiencies relating to parking meter spaces for both consumers and parking authorities that manage parking spaces.